Singing about Hank Williams is a family tradition for Darrell Scott

“Once I was a slave for Satan. Many wrong things I have done. Many hearts have been broken. Too late to right the wrongs I’ve done.”

That’s from the song "This Weary Way," and the lyrics have been a part of singer/songwriter Darrell Scott’s life for decades.

Early on, he was sure they came from the late “Hillbilly Shakespeare” himself.

“When I was a kid, I thought Hank wrote that song,” said Scott, who will be visiting soon to help celebrate Hank Williams’ 100th birthday on Sept. 17.  He’s got a 7 p.m. show at the Montgomery Performing Arts Centre that’s billed as “100 Years of Hank.”

“Let’s celebrate this amazing Alabama/Montgomery man named Hank Williams,” Scott said. “Let’s celebrate him. It’s 100 years. Let’s celebrate and honor his amazing music, and that’s what we’re going to do on stage.”

It seems very likely that “This Weary Way” will be in the lineup. It’s off his latest album Old Cane Back Rocker with the Darrell Scott String Band.

Another song on Old Cane Back Rocker, “One Hand Upon the Wheel,” mentions both Hank and Montgomery. Hank has had a big influence on Scott’s music, and that’s a significant part of what Scott wants to show MPAC’s audience.

“I’m just trying to bring a program that will illuminate the importance of Hank Williams, 100 years after his birth,” said Scott, a former ASCAP and NSAI Songwriter of the Year.

During the pandemic lockdown of 2020, Scott released an album called “Darrell Scott Sings the Blues of Hank Williams.”

“In essence, that record, and that band, and that general sound is what I’m bringing to Montgomery on Hank’s hundredth,” Scott said. “I always thought that the Hank music lended itself to blues. Hank learned guitar from an African American of Alabama, a street player back in the day named ‘Tee Tot’ (Rufus Payne). I know that a lot of Hank’s songs have the word ‘blues’ in them… So I made a record that kind of bluesed the songs up. I took the blues that are already sitting in there, and I just added instrumentation in it from my point of view of what that would sound like.”

While he’s often known for playing acoustic guitar, Scott said he went mostly electric for his Hank album, mixed with keyboard by Reese Wynans of Joe Bonamassa’s band, plus Jeff Sipe on drums and Bryn Davies on upright bass. They'll be with him for the MPAC show also.

“I’m bringing a stellar group to do some of the songs from the record I made,” Scott said. “But another take I want to have his songs where I literally mention Hank. He shows up in at least two or three of my songs. Hank has just been this huge figure that just keeps rolling on.”

Scott said he’ll be discussing the music as he goes through the performance.

Tickets for the show range from $17.50 to $37, and are available by calling the MPAC box office at 334-481-5100, or online at mpaconline.org.

“There’s no place I’d rather be on Hank’s 100th birthday,” Scott said. “There in Montgomery, Ala., doing a Hank show… I’m not just doing it for a gig. I’ve been doing it all along.”

The one Hank site in Montgomery that Darrell Scott missed

Though he hasn’t played a show in Montgomery before, Scott has wondered the streets here as an artist and as a visitor.

You’d think he’d have seen everything there is to see around here related to Hank. Scott even shot a video here for his original 2006 song “Hank Williams' Ghost.”

“We finished our videotaping over at the (Hank Williams) gravesite there,” Scott said.

He’s visited the Hank Williams Museum on Commerce Street.

“I came out with a painting that was kind of like a Southern art style thing,” Scott said. “It had the lyrics of ‘I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,’ and then there was Hank kind of jutting out of the painting. It’s on my wall now.”

A couple of months ago, Scott was here attending a Biscuits baseball game and somehow missed seeing the statue of Hank on Commerce Street, which stands the intersection just ahead of the tunnel to Riverfront Park. It’s been there since 2016, after being moved from Lister Park where it was installed in 1991.

“I was walking around looking at the place we were going to play at, but I didn’t see the Hank statue,” Scott said.

Now that he knows it’s there, Scott’s going to go see the statue when he comes back to town.

“Montgomery and Hank, they go together,” Scott said.

So who actually wrote ‘This Weary Way’?

Back to the song in question: For years, even though Darrell hadn’t heard a recording of Hank singing it, he continued to think “This Weary Way” was Hank’s song. It just felt like it belonged to the country music icon, and Darrell would continue to believe it did until he was around 20.

But Darrell was wrong, and in being wrong he discovered a deeper connection to both Hank and the man he knew as Hank’s number one fan.

“I was like, oh my God, that’s my dad’s song,” Darrell said.

You see, Walter Scott — who worked in steel mills installed chain-link fences — was also a singer and an aspiring, but secret, songwriter. With his five boys along in the band — Darrell, Denny, Dale, Don and David — they played cover songs everywhere from honky tonks, to churches and even prisons, always doing other people’s music, including Hank’s. Through the ‘60s and ‘70s, Darrell Scott can recall hearing his dad sing along with Hank’s music.

“My dad loved Hank Williams. Just a fanatic of Hank,” Darrell Scott said. “He just latched on to Hank because of his singing, the writing, his band. Everything about Hank Williams, my dad was all about it.”

In an interview with National Public Radio in 2006, the elder Scott talked about why he and his sons didn’t perform any of his original works in their shows. It’s a problem echoed by original artists everywhere who play live gigs — audiences are often more drawn to familiar music.

“I tried singing my songs once, and I didn't like the cold feet and cold shoulder I got singing them,” Walter Scott told NPR.

It took a while for Darrell to convince his 71-year-old dad it was finally time to record his originals. From that, the album This Weary Way was released in 2005, six years before his father's death.

“He tried to sing like him. He tried to write like him,” Darrell Scott said. “All those records were absolutely the backdrop of my childhood, the entire catalog of Hank Williams.”

Montgomery Advertiser reporter Shannon Heupel covers things to do in the River Region. Contact him at sheupel@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Montgomery Advertiser: Singing about Hank Williams is a family tradition for Darrell Scott